High School Photo Winner's Showcase

Cat Got Your Tongue by Eleanor Mayes

2nd Place - Natural Category

For this photograph, I took a picture of my cat drinking some milk. Cats drink in a unique manner in that instead of lapping, they dart their tongue down onto the surface of the liquid while bending the tip of the tongue so it is parallel to the liquid. Using liquid adhesion they pull up a stream of milk or water. The stream continues upwards due to the inertia of the fluid, and before the stream breaks, or gravity forces it back down, the cat closes its mouth around the stream of fluid. As is seen here, the cat?s tongue is already retracted and the column of milk is flowing upward. The milk is shown to flow upwards because cohesion between the column of milk and the surface causes it to be wider at the base, and cohesion within the milk causes the rest of the column to be thinner.